By Simon Jenkins

The Times, London

So how do you feel, asks an unkindly correspondent, now that you see the torture chambers and killing fields of Kosovo? How now this Hitler of the Balkans? How now the “appeasers”? Was Tony Blair not right to bomb the bastard to pieces?

The answer is that I feel exactly as I did at the start. It takes a warped brain not to be sickened by war, especially “civil” war. But it takes a dangerous one to refuse to think. The present horror will run its course. The media are still revelling in atrocity pornography. Next will come the memoirs, the novels and the movies. Then the worm will turn. We shall hear of the horrors of the Albanian revenge. Then we shall remark that vendetta is the culture of the Balkans, and wander away from this landscape of violence.

How do I feel? I am revolted by what Mr Milosevic’s forces have done to the Albanians of Kosovo. But my revulsion is immaterial. What matters is how to bring revulsion home to those responsible, especially when they know that the world was unrevolted by the same horrors perpetrated four years ago on hundreds of thousands of Serbs by Croats, with American backing and not a peep from Britain. And what of revulsion at Nato’s response? In March, the European community had in place in Kosovo 2,000 military monitors and aid workers. Though unarmed, they were at least there. Serb evictions were confined to areas of KLA activity, and there were no mass killings. Nato decided to pull the monitors out and “stop the ethnic cleansing” by air power alone. That was a calculated Nato gamble.

The mass graves show how that gamble failed. And we call it a victory? While the unrestrained killings were taking place, tens of thousands of Nato troops were slumped inert over the horizon, in Macedonia, Albania and aboard a vast Adriatic armada. Nato openly admits to knowing what was happening: Robin Cook would splutter the horrors weekly to the House of Commons. Yet all Nato did was roam the skies, bombing empty office blocks and deserted barracks. Nato’s true response to “ethnic cleansing” was to tell its soldiers to look good but not get hurt. Its cynicism was complete, right down to Jamie Shea’s nonsense about “massive” Yugoslav casualties and “only military targets hit”. How do I feel? Revolted.

We can argue all night over whether a pre-emptive rapid deployment to Kosovo would have stopped or impeded the killing and clearing. In my opinion (and that of others), such a deployment was the only proper “humanitarian” alternative to removing the monitors. What is beyond argument is that bombing alone did not stop the horror. Nato may claim that ground action was “not on politically”. But if so, it can hardly claim that its failure was somehow “moral”, while those who at least wanted to leave the monitors in place were “immoral”. This is ethical doublethink.

If we are really to bandy ethics in this matter, Nato’s Tomahawk moralists have serious charges to answer. Even if the monitors were restraining the Serbs only up to a point, they were at least an international presence in Pristina. Intelligence now indicates that the wholesale clearances and killings did not start until the monitors had gone and Nato’s “stand-off-and-bomb” strategy had begun. The worst rampages were after the start of intensive bombing of Kosovo itself in mid-April, and tended to follow an all-clear. It is wholly probable that the lack of monitors and the mayhem of bombing exacerbated the killings. I do not say excuse; I say exacerbate.

The bombing was militarily almost useless. The Yugoslav 3rd Army withdrew last week apparently intact from the most ferocious air assault since Vietnam. Nato can hardly find a single bombed tank to its credit. Latest estimates of Yugoslav soldiers killed from the air vary from 200 to 400, fewer than are believed to have died from contemporary KLA guerrilla action. In other words, KLA bullets on the ground had more military impact than thousands of bombs from the air. If these figures are right, Nato’s bombing not only failed in its central objective, but left more dead civilians (roughly 1,400) than dead soldiers. On your way, morality.

Of the three Kosovan wars, the true losers of the first, the air war, are neither Nato nor Mr Milosevic, but those now being unearthed from the fields of Kosovo. Two British corpses were added on Monday. They were “friendly fire” victims of Nato’s use, constantly denied, of cluster bombs on populated areas. These weapons, with their 8 per cent “non-explosion rate”, must surely contravene the landmines convention. The Serbs at least mapped their minefields. Cluster bombs lay mines at random. No British Army should use them.

The second war, the conquest of Kosovo by Nato ground troops, has been dilatory, messy but successful. Most analysts now agree that success was due to Mr Milosevic deciding to withdraw his army in the face of two pressures. The first was a clear warning from the European envoy, Martti Ahtisaari, that Nato had changed its mind and a British-led invasion of Kosovo was imminent, with American support. Whether or not this was bluff, Mr Milosevic believed it. The second pressure came from Russia’s Viktor Chernomyrdin, indicating that Moscow’s brotherly love might not extend to sending troops or even weapons. Mr Milosevic moved fast. He hacked a withdrawal deal that insisted on Nato disarming the KLA and respecting Yugoslav sovereignty over Kosovo. He lost the second war, but only on points.

Now begins the third war. It will be the toughest, because it must be fought street by street in defence of a fudged treaty. Proper soldiers will fight it: politicians will have had their pictures taken, packed up their bombs and vanished. On Monday the KLA was allowed to keep its weapons for three months. That should enable it to complete the next round of this Balkan horror, burning Serb villages, evicting Gypsies, smashing churches and settling lethal scores. British troops, who appear to be the only “conviction policemen” in Kfor, cannot be everywhere. And whatever the British press may say, the Americans call the shots. They have clearly decided that Kosovo will be a KLA statelet, armed to the teeth and drenched in money. It was the Americans who insisted on Monday that the KLA be allowed to become a “territorial army” in September. Britain’s record on decommissioning former terrorists faces another defeat.

Three months ago, half a million Albanians were evicted from Kosovo and came under Nato protection. Nato honoured that protection and has brought them back to their land. Now we have 50,000 Serbs evicted from that same Kosovo and coming under the protection of the Yugoslav Army. What next? The worst hope for peace is probably for Mr Milosevic to fall in favour of a revanchist successor, winning power on a pledge to win back Kosovo for the refugees and the army. Idiot Western politicians seem eager for this to happen. Nato will rue the day it refused Russia a Serb sector of Kosovo and drove the refugees back into Serbia proper.

Britain is heavily committed to this third war. By every account, most of Kosovo outside Pristina is politically and military in the hands of the KLA. The Albanian flag flies over every public building. Nato’s Lieutenant-General Sir Michael Jackson cannot stop this, least of all with the Americans compliant. So Nato must soon decide. Will it renege on the United Nations resolution of June 10, recognise de facto Kosovo independence and defend the KLA against a furious Yugoslav response? If so, Nato is there for ever in a Balkan Palestine. Or will Nato stick to the deal, properly disarm the KLA and readmit Serb troops, as agreed a fortnight ago? If so, that too would be a Balkan Palestine.

The only Balkan god is pragmatism. But this time Nato is trapped. It is on the ground, reaping the whirlwind that it sowed in March. There is no more sheltering behind a “moral bomb”.

© The Times 1999